


Troubled Water Running Cold

by synonym4life



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexuality, Blow Jobs, Brooklyn, Canon Compliant, Captain America: The First Avenger, Gay Steve Rogers, Heavy Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Jealousy, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Pain, Pining, Pining Bucky Barnes, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Requited Unrequited Love, Tragic Romance, Unrequited Love, World War II, You Have Been Warned, in a historical context ofc, just a whole lot of, so many tags damn, you know what that means folks you know how canon ends for Bucky in TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synonym4life/pseuds/synonym4life
Summary: Bucky Barnes loved Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers loved him back. And, yet, this is still a story about love that was, but never got tobe.I don't even know what to tell you, folks. The tragedy that is Bucky Barnes compels me to write shit like this.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 89
Kudos: 189





	1. O you whom I love, O you who knows it

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the t a g s 
> 
> The title of the fic is from Lewis Capaldi's song Before You Go, specifically this verse:  
>  _When you hurt under the surface  
>  Like troubled water running cold  
> Well, time can heal, but this won't_
> 
> The fic opens with a section of Charles Baudelaire's poem _À une passante (To a Passerby)._ Only the crossed-out bit is part of the poem. The bit that's not crossed-out is a twist on the verse, reworked so that it fits Bucky's situation. I'd also like to thank sensalito ( [**AO3**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensalito/pseuds/sensalito) and [**Tumblr**](https://sensalito.tumblr.com/) ) for helping me with French! <3 
> 
> Btw, the fic will have 3 chapters (I think) and will only amount to about 10k. The next chapter will be up on Friday and the one after on Monday next week. I have almost the whole thing written already (like 8k is already written).
> 
> Oh, also! Bucky is Jewish in this fic, but not religious. I'm raised Christian but non-religious, so if I've done anything wrong regarding that, if there's anything here that is offensive, please know that it was unintentional and also you are free to call me out on it and I'll fix it.
> 
> Enjoy the PAIN my dears

~~_Ô toi que j'eusse aimé,_ ~~   
~~_ô toi qui le savais_ ~~   
_Ô toi que j’aime,_   
_Ô toi qui le sais_

~~_O you whom I would have loved,_ ~~   
~~_O you who knew it!_ ~~   
_O you whom I love,_   
_O you who knows it_

It was September twenty-first, nineteen thirty-two, at exactly seven in the evening when Bucky Barnes first kissed Steve Rogers.

It was September twenty-first, nineteen thirty-two, at seven in the evening and a second, when Steve Rogers froze in place, Bucky’s lips pressed to his.

It was September twenty-first, nineteen thirty-two, at seven in the evening and two or three or four seconds when Steve Rogers shoved Bucky away for the first time.

_I loved you every day._   
_You only let me love you three._

_Three days out of all the days I loved you_   
_and I loved you every day until I died._

“Steve,” Bucky whispered into the night. It was New Year’s Eve. Bucky’s sisters were sound asleep on the other side of the room while Steve and Bucky lay on a makeshift mattress on the floor. They’d decided to forego sleeping on Bucky’s bed partly because they’ve both grown in the past summer and the bed was becoming quite small, and partly because of the inherent charm of sleeping on the floor, mysterious enough a transgression from everyday life that it made the atmosphere feel magical.

“Yeah?” Steve answered, wide awake.

“You remember how I kissed you a few months ago?” _September twenty-first._ Bucky definitely hadn’t forgotten. He was certain Steve hadn’t either.

“Yeah?” It came out careful, tentative.

“Did you hate it?”

“I —” Steve lay so still Bucky was afraid he’d fallen asleep mid answer.

“Cat got your tongue?” Bucky’s voice was feeble, trying for a joke that had been set to fail.

“No.”

“If a cat didn’t get your tongue why aren’t you an—”

“No. I didn’t — “ Steve cut him off as if deciding getting the words out as quickly as possible was, after all, better than stalling. “I didn’t hate it.”

“Oh.” Bucky blinked into the darkness. “I thought…”

Steve was stiff beside him, still but wound up, as if he was prepared to run away at any second. But Bucky knew Steve. Steve never ran away. “Why’d you push me away then?”

Steve finally shifted, moving his legs, restless. “Do we gotta talk about this now?”

Ignoring him Bucky went on. “‘Cause I been thinking of doing it again.”

Steve’s legs stopped fidgeting under the covers. “I—” he sounded contrived. “Buck, you know… you know that ain’t right, right?”

Bucky stayed quiet for a long time. Somewhere along the conversation, his heart had started hammering in his chest. “I know.” A few missed beats. “I still wanna do it.”

“I— “ Steve sounded even less sure than before.

Bucky’s palms had turned into an honest-to-god swamp, but he reached out to the side anyway. He found Steve’s arm and felt around for his hand, taking it in his. It was colder than his but just as clammy.

“Think about it, okay?” He squeezed Steve’s fingers and Steve squeezed back. “Just think about it.”

_Back then, I don’t think I knew how much I really loved you._   
_But even then, I understood that you would ruin me._

It was the night of April fifteen, nineteen thirty-four, the smell of the blooming trees was heavy in the air, intoxicating, sweet, heady, when Bucky turned his head to find Steve looking at him, soft and wondrous and scared.

They were lying on the fire escape, the first truly warm night of the year letting them sprawl over the iron platform well after midnight. There were no stars above them, the city bright enough to drown out their light, but the moon was visible, round and mysterious, hung in the middle of the sky, dangling down from heaven like a false promise.

Bucky looked at Steve’s eyes and saw the moonlight there.

Steve didn’t move, safe from a shaky breath making his lower lip quiver. Bucky searched his eyes for the promise and found it, right there in Steve’s wide irises. He inched closer, slowly, afraid the promise would skid away like a frightened animal. Bucky’s whole body ached with want, weighed down by the sweet desire.

Steve turned his head away and Bucky’s mouth met the soft corner of Steve’s lips. Steve had closed his eyes, tight, the promise skittering away. Before Bucky found the strength to pull away, he pressed his forehead to Steve’s temple, breathing in, Steve, Steve, Steve.

“‘S okay,” he murmured, “‘s okay.”

Steve squeezed his eyes tighter and shook his head.

It was the night of April fifteen, nineteen thirty-four, when Steve shoved Bucky away for the fifth time.

It was the night of April fifteen, nineteen thirty-four, when Bucky stopped trying.

_You were my friend, Steve,_   
_I would have loved you no matter what._

_But I hated you, too, a little bit._   
_For wanting me back._

“You’re jealous,” Bucky snapped at Steve, shutting him up, a balloon of ugly satisfaction bursting in his chest when Steve recoiled.

Steve glared at him, fists clenched at his sides. “I’m not—”

“You are.” A knowing, sure smile spread across Bucky’s face.

“I’m not jealous!” Steve grit his teeth, red in the face, anger rising with every second that passed because he couldn’t even convince _himself_ it was true. “You just stroll in whenever you fucking wish, eating my and ma’s food—”

“ _What_?” Fucking bastard. “You invited me. I _told_ you I had plans and I still came ‘cause I wanted to see my best pal.”

Steve breathed in through his nose. “Yeah, well you didn’t need ta come if you were gonna up and leave, just rush out to a hot date again, the kitchen a goddamn mess, as if I’m your fucking maid, cook, and cleaning lady who’ll do the dishes while you go off to fuck your way through east-side Brooklyn.”

Bucky’s rising satisfaction cut off, then dropped like a stone, until only white-hot burning anger was left behind. The world stood still for a moment, the clock stopped ticking, but Bucky was still burning from inside out and then the clock moved on and so did he, stepping closer to Steve.

“You hypocrite,” he hissed. For the fire that burned inside him, his voice came out ice-cold. Steve cast his eyes away and Bucky hated him all the more for it, Steve fucking Rogers, braver than any other man in Brooklyn, ready to face every single fist thrown at him, but hiding from his heart and effectively stomping on Bucky’s in the process.

“You know it,” Bucky told him, cold, but there was emotion making its way into his voice, emotion he’d never been able to hold back. “You’ve known it _for years.”_

And suddenly there were hot tears burning behind Bucky’s eyes, unbidden, but not unexpected.

“You _know_ it.” His voice broke, ringing out on a note that sounded too much like a prayer.

_You know I love you._

Steve met his eyes and Bucky knew the answer before he’d even opened his mouth.

“It ain’t right,” he said, pleading, almost begging Bucky to agree.

Bucky pushed his tears back, froze them in place. There might be no getting rid of them, but he’d be damned if he let them fall.

He clenched his jaw and forced a smile through the marble muscles that seemed to make his face. A curt nod. A statue without joints, forced to move his head.

“Guess you’ll just have to watch me fuck my way through east-side Brooklyn then.”

_I doubted sometimes, of course, I did,_   
_questioned what I saw in your eyes._

_But at least you never lied to me._   
_At least you gave me that._

“Tell me,” Bucky said, sat on a bench by the docks on a beautiful cloudless summer day. He was itching for a cig, but Steve’s asthma had been acting up, so Bucky fingered the stitch on his trousers to still his anxious hand. “If I were a girl…” he nodded in the direction of four girls sunbathing on the pier, “would you?”

“Buck.”

“It’s an honest question, Stevie. Nothin’ else but a question.”

Steve turned on the bench, his whole body, not only his gaze, concentrating on Bucky. “Why do you have to needle like that, Buck? What good does it do?”

“I need to know—” Bucky swallowed, the intensity of Steve’s eyes making him feel small. “Am I going crazy? Is it really just me, or… I need to know if…”

“If, if, if.” Steve’s face darkened, contrasting the blaring sun above. “ _What if’s_ never made anyone happy.”

“Why can’t you just fucking tell me?” Bucky wanted to tear all his hair out of his scalp, frustrated to the point of near insanity. “I need to know if I’ve completely lost my plot. Is it just me? Is it just me or do you want me too?”

Steve blanched. He wasn’t expecting Bucky to be so honest. Too bad for him Bucky was too far gone to care.

“Do you?!” Bucky leaned in as if he could intimidate the truth out of Steve. “‘Cause I swear to god Steve, I see you lookin’. I see you lookin’ like you ain’t supposed to be lookin’. I feel it when you touch me, _I hear it in your fucking breath._ Am I right? Do you want me? Have you ever?”

Steve set his jaw and his eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

Bucky wasn’t sure whether no wouldn’t have hurt less. Then Steve looked away, the weight of his one word enough to tip the scale in his favor. His eyes settled on the girls. They were laughing, two with their heads tipped back exposing the lines of their necks, two bent over, hair falling over their eyes.

“And if we lived in your What If world, Bucky,” Steve said, all anger long lost as he looked down at his knees, “I would fucking marry you.”

_If only you’d have realized it wasn’t my What If world._   
_That was all you. Putting borders where they didn’t belong._

_It was your What If world, Steve, you setting limits to love._

Placed into the bottom drawer, beneath Steve’s two art books, was his battered notebook. For the lengths Steve went to to keep Bucky from seeing it, it was fantastically easy to find.

Bucky took it out and flipped it open without stalling. Steve would be back soon. His showers were army-quick.

Bucky had known the subject of these drawings, of course. Knew why Steve didn’t let him see them. That didn’t stop him from wanting to, however, and since he was the one providing the content for every single one of them, he felt a little entitled to see them.

He flipped to the middle, and his own face stared back at him, his body stretched out in the sunlight, his shirt off and his chest gleaming. Behind him was a chimney, and beneath it, a bottle of beer bathed in the chimney’s sorry excuse for a shadow.

A small, content smirk played on drawing-Bucky’s lips, but his mouth, well-practiced at being cocky, wasn’t quite pulling off the habitual nonchalance; the adoration in his eyes was too sincere for any pretense his face was trying to put on. This was how he looked at Steve. He knew and hadn’t known. He definitely didn’t think he was this obvious.

His eyes, despite being drawn with a pencil, were all color. Slightly hooded, the way people’s eyes get when the warmth of the summer sun reaches right to the depths of their heart. They shone brightly. Wondrous, striking, in love.

Eyes that someone had captured with such great care that the one who’d done it must have been in love right back.

Bucky swallowed the bitter lump in his throat.

Right next to where the notebook had lain in the drawer, was a string of small beads and a cross in the middle. The rosemary Sarah had bought Steve for his eighteenth birthday.

The impulse to take it out, feel the cold beads in his hands and then rip it apart, bead by bead overtook Bucky. He wanted to ruin every single one of them, smash them to pieces, crush them under the heel of his boot. Steve never talked to Bucky about his God. Not because Bucky was Jewish—if he could even take himself for one since all he did was celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah and even that was mostly for the good meals and good company. No, it wasn’t because Bucky was Jewish, it was because Steve’s God kept taking Steve away from him.

_You loved your shiny God more than you ever loved me._   
_Hope that counts for something up there in heaven._   
_‘Cause let me tell you_   
_you’re still a fairy, even if you don’t wanna be one._

“What are you doing?” Steve’s voice was all steel.

Of course, Bucky had stood there staring at the drawings for longer than he should have. Of course, Steve caught him. He didn’t have a lick of luck in his bones.

“Didn’t know I was posing for you all these times,” Bucky quipped. He had known. He’d known and he’d preened at it.

“Do you know anything about privacy?” Steve strode into the room, right up to Bucky and snatched the sketchbook out of his hands.

“Do _you_?” Bucky asked, pointedly raising his eyebrows at the drawings. Some of them, the ones no longer attached to the binding of the sketchbook, slipped out and slid to the floor.

Steve’s jaw twitched, knowing he was cornered. Bucky knew he shouldn’t have gone on, he knew he should have shrugged and walked out, but he couldn’t.

“Keep these in the bedside drawer do you?” He let his gaze darken suggestively, meanly. “What do you do with ‘em, huh, Rogers? You wank off to these? Prop ‘em up next to you and palm your dick until you come?”

Steve’s fingers twitched so hard the paper in his hand protested soundly. He was livid. “That all there is to you? That all you think about, huh, _Barnes_?” Steve narrowed his eyes and bit out through a sneer, “That all you fucking want from me? To give it up to you? The only one who ever said no?”

Bucky thought for a second that he would get angry, too. Instead, he laughed.

“That what you think, Steve?” A twisted (sad, so sad, he was so fucking sad all the time) smile turned down his lips. “Keep telling yourself that if it makes you sleep easier at night. But know, that this,” he jerked his hand between them, “this goes to my _bones_. My fucking marrow is made of it, Steve, don’t ever accuse me of not telling you that.”

_Here’s the thing Stevie,_   
_did I dream of you “giving it up to me”?_

_Sure did, pal._

_You poured petrol into my bones and set it aflame._   
_Of course, I wanted it._   
_Wanted to open you up so sweetly, so gently, wanted to push into that blissful tightness and wait for you to tell me to move even though tears were welling up in my eyes from the torture of keeping still._

_Yeah, I wanted you to give it up to me._

_But mostly I wanted to hold your hand._   
_Mostly I wanted to brush your hair out of your eyes._   
_Mostly I wanted to love you._

_Mostly I wanted you to love me back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! I enjoy writing angst and find it really cathartic, but I don't know how it feels for you. I hope I didn't hurt you too much :O
> 
> If you like the fic, you can reblog [**this post**](https://synonym-for-life.tumblr.com/post/614766628066983936/stucky-fic-troubled-water-running-cold) on Tumblr.


	2. Soothing the Pain Outweighed the Sin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, this is so emo, I don't even know what to tell you ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Second of all:
> 
> Some sex in the first part of this chapter (not very graphic).
> 
> Oh, also, I realized I forgot to add the _Italics_ formatting in the bulk text in the last chapter, so that might have made the reading weird in some parts where the Italics were necessary. Oops? I'll fix it now. 
> 
> Also, bear in mind that, although the term bisexuality already existed at that time, it is unlikely that Steve and Bucky knew it. This results in a bit of a confusing conversation about sexual attraction, which also turns a bit misogynistic. Sorry for that, but I felt like at that time men, even Steve and Bucky, were way less conscious of their subtle discrimination.

_The first day I was allowed to love you was the day we put your ma to rest._  
_Maybe you were angry at your God, maybe soothing the pain outweighed the sin._

_I didn’t want to cave in. Didn’t wanna do it because I knew you’d hate me for it._  
_But you begged, and who was I to tell you no._

“I’m with you till the end of the line,” Bucky said because he couldn’t say I love you. He clapped Steve’s shoulder because he couldn’t kiss him.

Steve fumbled with his keys, turned to unlock the door, and went inside. Instead of closing them in Bucky’s face, he left them open. When Bucky didn’t follow he glanced back, “You coming in or what?”

Bucky did and Steve was right there, not having moved an inch farther than two steps inside. Bucky closed the door behind him so that he could press his back to it, give Steve space. Steve didn’t move. He kept staring at the cracked floorboards, seemingly trying to make up his mind. The moment he did, he closed his eyes, turned, and pinned them on Bucky.

Bucky didn’t even have the time to get a breath in, much less a word, before Steve stepped forward, and crashed his mouth to Bucky’s, the only warning a furious fire in his eyes. Steve’s hands clawed at Bucky’s best suit, desperate for something to hold. He moved his mouth, hungry, angry, inexperienced. It was all Bucky had ever wanted, Steve’s body in his arms, his mouth on his, a heart so wrought with yearning that he fumbled before responding. But respond he did. Not in kind, not with despair even though that’s all he’d felt for years. He responded softly, gently, as if Steve was the one in danger of breaking and not him.

He let himself have it, a few seconds, perhaps a minute of bliss before he pulled away.

“Steve.” Bucky was breathing heavy, Steve even heavier. “Stop. No, stop. You’re not— You’re not in your right mind.”

Steve didn’t let him go. He kept his furious eyes trained on Bucky, angry and betrayed. Bucky knew the emotions weren’t for him.

“Steve, please, you wouldn’t be doin’—”

“I don’t care,” Steve said shaking his head. “I don’t care!” He shouted, half manic, tears welling in his eyes and hair flying out of the careful coiffe he wore for the funeral.

He crashed his mouth on Bucky’s again, stepping impossibly closer, so close Bucky could feel every line of his body, could smell the dustiness of Steve’s jacket, gone unused for too long before that day. Bucky tore his mouth away, let Steve’s slide to his jaw.

“No, Steve, no.”

Steve was shaking in his arms. Bucky’s cheeks were wet, not from Steve’s mouth, but from his tears.

“Please.” It was a quiet, broken sound, one he’d never have thought Steve was able to make. Bucky knew how much Steve loved his ma, her steadfastness, her kindness, her unerring optimism that Steve relied on when he couldn’t muster his own. “I don’t, God, Bucky, I can’t, I can’t stand this.” Steve crumbled further into Bucky’s chest, clinging for dear life. “Please, _please_.”

Bucky would hate himself after, he’d hate himself for giving in because Steve would regret every second of it the next day. But he loved him, he had loved him since he could remember. Since the day on the playground when Steve grudgingly took Bucky’s hand, helping him off the ground. Since the day _Bucky_ got into a fight for once and Steve patched him up, his hands unpracticed but so, so gentle. Since the day Steve threw his favorite book at Bucky because he told him it sucked. He still had a scar on his forehead from it. Steve had been so sorry immediately after he almost gave himself an asthma attack, but Bucky, Bucky laughed until he fell to the floor because Steve was an asshole and he loved him so very much.

So Bucky gave in and kissed back, grabbed, took as much as he gave because there was Steve, begging him to take the pain away, to make him forget that he was now an orphan left to the world, no mother’s arms to fall back on.

Bucky walked them back to the tattered couch and pushed Steve onto it, kissing his neck, his face, his eyes. _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ written in every kiss. He dragged his fingers down his torso, down his arms, over his collarbones, his cheeks. _You have me, you still have me, you have me forever,_ written in every touch.

Steve unraveled under him, shivering and moaning in turn. There were tears too, turning his breaths snotty, making it hard to gulp down air, but when Bucky took him into his mouth he liked to imagine there were tears of bliss in between them too. Steve’s hands were in his hair and his mouth was open, crying out for more. Bucky gave it to him, made his mouth tighter, let Steve fuck in deeper, even though it made him gag and come up gasping for air.

It was a sweet kind of torture, knowing what their What If would look like, knowing how sweet his mouth could turn for Steve, knowing how, when Steve begged, it was Bucky’s name his pleas began with.

Steve spilled into Bucky’s mouth, a choked off sound falling from his lips. Bucky tried to swallow it all, but most of it spattered around his mouth, onto his neck even. He crumpled into Steve’s hip, burying his nose into the soft skin, breathing in the musky scent of Steve’s dick.

“I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,” came thundering out of his mouth. It was his turn to beg.

Steve only sobbed harder.

_I lay next to you, just as cold, alone, and sad as you were. And you let me.  
_ _The next day, you went to church._

“Where you been?”

“Church.”

A chill ran down Bucky’s spine, but he didn’t want to believe—didn’t even want to think it was because of what they did. So he turned to Steve, eyes understanding, and said, “Stevie, you know you don’t need to pray for your ma. If anyone’s getting into heaven it’s her. Ain’t ever been a purer soul on earth than her.”

The keys tinkled against the bowl they were dropped in. Steve, instead of moving into the room, stood there staring at the porcelain with unseeing eyes.

“Wasn’t praying for her.”

Silence stretched between them like a deceptively calm river. The kind of river you wade in to swim, but never return from.

“Right,” Bucky said, a failed attempt to grab onto a soaked-through log. He’d already been swept away.

_The worst thing?_  
_You probably weren’t even praying for yourself._  
_You were praying for me._

Bucky spun the girl in his arms around the dancefloor, until the music was drowned out by her laughter. She laughed when he twirled her, laughed when he lifted her, laughed when he sent her into a dip, following close behind. The sound rang in his ears soaking him in a fiery glow. She was gorgeous, one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen. He’d forgotten her name by the second song, and they were on the sixth now and he felt too embarrassed to ask, even though, perhaps for the first time, he really wanted to know.

He banished the thought, letting his fiery dance partner take him away, letting her lead step after step, following wherever she wanted to go.

His eyes still flicked to the hunched, grumpy figure in the corner every now and then, but he refused to be torn down from his high. Steve could mope around all he wanted, Bucky was going to have the time of his life. It was New Year’s Eve and New York was loud and bright and cheerful, and he would follow. New Year, new life.

He dipped the girl again, emboldened, leaning closer to her chest, toeing the line of indecency, and grinned cheekily when all she did was wink. The faraway corner grew gloomier and Bucky’s mood rose ever higher.

_Oh, how I marveled in watching you squirm._  
_I could lie, act like I’m a decent fella, pretend I didn’t like how you fumed._  
_Truth is; many a mouth was kissed because you were there to see it._

Another mouth, another kiss, another soft and pliant waist in Bucky’s hands, but always always always the same blue eyes that he locked gazes with over the shoulder of whichever girl he was kissing that night.

They flashed. Bucky smirked into the kiss and let his hand slip lower.

_I loved your jealousy more than I ever loved any of them.  
Then you made me mad, and I loved you even more.   
_

“What the hell, Steve? Again?” The paper in Bucky’s hand crumpled as his anger went from zero to furious. He waved another—all too familiar—enlistment form with 4F stamped on it in Steve’s face.

Steve shrugged, not commenting, but glaring back just as hard. They’d been through this conversation too many times to count. Before Steve had even tried enlisting for the first time.

“What do you want to prove, Steve, huh? What is it?” Bucky was not dropping it. He’d show Steve what stubbornness really was. He’d been saving his ass for more than a decade already, and you had to be a stubborn bastard for that. “This isn’t normal. What the _hell_ do you have to prove? You think it’ll make you all grand and respected?”

“It’s my duty,” Steve gritted out, a string of words repeated so many times it could be a nursery rhyme.

“It’s not your duty to die!” Bucky shouted. He couldn’t imagine. He couldn’t— “What the hell do you want to prove? You think this will make you more of a man?”

“Maybe I do.” Steve crossed his arms over his chest and Bucky was reminded how narrow and thin it was. The guy could barely survive pneumonia, he wouldn’t last a week in the trenches.

“What?” Bucky asked because he wasn’t really paying attention, images of Steve with torn limbs and lifeless eyes flashing in his mind.

“Maybe I fucking do since it looks like I’m not man enough for you.” Steve’s glare became harder, his mouth thinning.

“What?” Bucky repeated. What the fuck was Steve even talking about. Bucky had forgotten his own question.

“You asked if I thought this would make me more of a man.” Steve’s shoulders went stiff. “And I told you maybe I do. Since you don’t seem to think I am one. Might help with that.”

“I don’t have the faintest goddamn idea what you’re talking about, Rogers.” Bucky thought Steve might have finally lost the plot. “As much of a pain as you are, you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”

“Well, I don’t know, Bucky.” Steve’s stance didn’t lose any of its tension. His eyes flashed, as he continued, “Seems like the opposite what with how much you want to—”

Steve stopped himself, hesitating for a split second.

“Wanna what?” Bucky demanded.

“What with how much you wanna fuck me,” Steve bit out, teeth clenched.

_How charming of you to have missed the point so royally._

“That what this is about?” Bucky had to laugh. Hysterically. “You think because I feel the way I feel, you’re a woman to me?”

“I—”

“So what then? Am _I_ a woman to _you_?” Because if Bucky was going to have to talk about it he’d make damn sure he wasn’t the only one getting his heart dissected. Steve could stop pretending his wasn’t involved.

“No,” Steve ground out. He squared his shoulders but dropped his gaze. “But you’re not like me.”

“Excuse me?” Bucky decided that Steve had indeed gone crazy. Completely off his rocker.

“You’ve kissed most of Brooklyn’s eligible women and half of the un-eligible ones.” Steve looked at him again, shrugging. “How hard is it to get it? I am. Not. Like. You.”

“You don’t like women.” It clicked in Bucky’s head.

Steve didn’t need to answer. It wasn’t a question. “And I’m not gonna be one of them for you either.”

Bucky felt like he’d been slapped.

“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t you dare reduce it to that. Don’t you dare reduce what I feel for you to some sort of delusion.” He stepped closer. “Here’s some news for you Steve. Women are fucking wonderful. Being ‘one of them’ should be a fucking honor what with the crap they put up with. But regarding what you’re afraid of: I don’t only like women, no matter how hard you find that to believe. And I don’t take you for one either. Make of that what you will.”

Steve stood completely still, eyes not moving from Bucky’s. “So… other guys?”

Bucky nodded.

“You’re. You can’t _want_ this—” Steve waved between them, “over what you could have. You can’t.”

“And yet I do.” Bucky’s voice was low but resolute. “Make of that what you will, too.”

_The second time I was allowed to love you,_  
_you loved me back._

From the day when Bucky got the draft Steve subtly changed. One would have thought Steve would be proud, righteous even since he was so hell-bent on enlisting himself. Instead, he became quieter, his words getting stuck in his throat, his gazes lingering for longer. He became kinder too, trying to mother Bucky on every step until Bucky yelled at him to stop being weird.

Bucky tried to pretend he was fine, tried to pretend he was going on a long vacation. He tried to pretend that he couldn’t see the newspaper headlines talking about the apocalyptical state of Europe. Tried to pretend that he didn’t know, deep down in his bones, that he was going to die on foreign land, cold and broken and alone.

The day before shipping out came bright and warm, but neither Steve nor he noticed. In an effort to take their minds off it, he took Steve to the World Exposition of Tomorrow.

Bucky watched Stark’s car soar up from the ground, and thought about the future far, far ahead of them—the future that posed no expectations, no fear, only wonder. The evening went as well as Bucky could hope. He put on a brave face before Steve and their dates and Steve put on a brave face in return.

After Bucky left Steve at the fair, he soon separated from his date and her friend too. He didn’t want to pretend all night. Not for a meaningless kiss and a fondle.

He went to a bar and got drunk. He drank until his feelings were numb enough that he was sure he wouldn’t randomly burst into tears. He didn’t drink enough to keep his legs from carrying him to Steve’s, though.

After a few heavy raps, a worried-looking Steve appeared at the door, letting him in. Bucky only stumbled a little bit when he stepped over the threshold. Small victories were all that was left to him in this life and not getting corked till unconsciousness the day before you were sent to war counted as one of them. Steve caught him around his waist.

“Hey,” Bucky said, smiling.

“Hey.” Steve shook his head. “What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see you for the last time.” Bucky didn’t really need Steve’s help, but the warmth of Steve’s arms was too precious to pull away. Bucky pretended to wobble and Steve’s arms tightened around him.

“Don’t be stupid.” Steve’s eyebrows did a complex dance that Bucky found very hard to follow. There was a mysterious smile ghosting over Steve’s face. “I’ll join you in no time. You’ll see my mug again before you’ll even be able to forget how ugly it is.”

“Not ugly,” Bucky muttered absentmindedly before clocking onto what Steve had said before. “Don’t be stupid, Stevie. They’re right not letting you in. Don’t be stubborn. Don’t you dare come after me, do you hear me. Don’t you dare.”

“Jeez, Bucky, you’re drunk,” Steve, as usual, ignored everything he didn’t want to talk about. Besides, it was unfair to call out Bucky’s drunkenness when he had only slurred the words a little bit. “Will they even let you on the ship if you show up like this? Don’t get yourself a dishonorable discharge before you even get there.”

Bucky laughed, but it didn’t sound very happy. “Don’t worry Steve, I’m not lucky like that.” For a while they simply stood in the hallway in silence, Bucky’s eyes on Steve, and Steve’s eyes jumping from one thing to another, not knowing where to settle. Bucky lifted his hand  
slowly, and placed it gently on his jaw, making Steve’s gaze settle on him. It wasn’t until Bucky caressed Steve’s pale cheek with his thumb that he noticed Steve was trembling.

“You better be a little bit lucky,” Steve whispered. _You better not die._

No effort at numbing his feelings could have kept Bucky from crying then. He stumbled for real but Steve’s arms held strong, steadying him through the shivers wrecking his body. As much as Bucky wanted to look at Steve’s face all he saw was a blur of spilled colors. Before he could wipe away the tears, Steve’s mouth was on him. It felt cold against Bucky’s hot lips, his flaming cheeks bathed in salty wetness. Steve kissed him the way Bucky had never been kissed before. With fervor and fear, with a longing so great, not a thousand kisses would be enough to abate it.

Bucky kissed back. He moved his lips in tandem with Steve, he fisted his hands in his shirt, he opened his mouth and let himself have the one constantly good thing in his life. Steve.

Bucky was afraid that when Steve broke away, he would let go entirely, but he didn’t. He pressed his face into Bucky’s neck and pulled him in tighter.

“Shh, Bucky,” Steve whispered into his collarbone. Bucky didn’t know why Steve was talking like that at first until he realized he hadn’t stopped crying. Heavy sobs were wrecking his body, the fear he’d felt for months fighting his way out now that he was safe in Steve’s arms.

“You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay,” Steve said over and over again. Maybe that was why people prayed. Maybe saying the same thing over and over again ensured that god had a chance to hear it. He had a lot of hearts and minds to listen to after all. Maybe this was Steve’s way of saying a prayer in Bucky’s name.

“Come on,” Steve pulled Bucky with him. “Come on, to the bedroom,” he pulled harder when Bucky refused to follow. Bucky went with him.

“Take off the uniform,” Steve ordered.

Bucky took off his hat, then started fumbling with the buttons on his coat. His fingers were trembling too hard for him to finish the job. Steve helped him unbutton the last three buttons, and Bucky got rid of the trousers quickly after that. Steve draped the uniform carefully over a chair, while Bucky got rid of his shirt. He was left standing in army issue shorts and a white t-shirt.

Steve sat him on the bed and pressed onto his shoulder. “Lie down.”

“What?”

“Just lie down for fuck’s sake.”

Bucky did and Steve threw the covers over him. He turned off the lights and climbed in after Bucky.

“Wha—” Bucky lost his voice when the mattress tipped right next to him. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t ask,” Steve told him, voice stiff. He scuttled closer and draped a ginger arm around Bucky’s torso, lowering himself carefully until he was pressed against Bucky’s side. Like before he buried his face into Bucky’s neck. He took a small sharp breath and then he pressed his lips against Bucky’s throat. Once and twice and thrice—

“Steve?”

“Shh,” Steve muffled the sound against Bucky’s clavicle. He ended up kissing Bucky all night. Nothing more, just kissing, holding, cradling Bucky in his arms. Steve kissed his eyes, his throat, his jaw, his neck, he caressed his arms, his torso, his back and Bucky got lost in Steve’s lips and hands, and kissed back. Soft, slow and timeless.

_In three weeks’ time,_  
_when there will be limbs flying around me, and screams piercing the night,_  
_I will remember your arms and your mouth,_  
_and thank the gods_  
_— all the gods that I could think of, even yours —_  
_that it wasn’t your limbs, that it wasn’t your screams._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes. Bucky gon be big mad at big Steve.
> 
> If you like the fic, you can reblog [**this post**](https://synonym-for-life.tumblr.com/post/615017530995703808/stucky-fic-troubled-water-running-cold) on Tumblr.


	3. Worth It All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....the "last chapter" turned out to be longer than the first two chapters combined because I keep coming up with scenes that I just _have to_ write. Anyway, that's why I split the long chapter into two because I don't like to have them uneven like that. PLUS that allows me to post one part today as I still have a pesky scene to write in the final 'throes' of the fic.

_I would have told you it was hell,_  
_would have dissected the war for you, limb for limb,_  
_broken it down for you like they broke me._

_I would have told you all about hell,_  
_but you were determined to see it for yourself._

Bucky couldn’t decide if it was real. It didn’t feel in the slightest bit real, but then again, this feeling of had snuck up on him more times than he could count in the past few months. In the trenches, when he saw Private Hart’s leg blown off mere paces from him, in the dark when he was crawling through mud and thorns, on Zola’s table when slice after slice, the knife cut into his skin—in those moments he felt like he’d left his body, felt like he was a ghost standing next to his soul-less sack of meat and bones. Like it wasn’t really happening. Even when his body’s reactions continued to be sharp in combat, even as his shots hit their mark over and over again bodies crumpling under the bullets, he wasn’t there. Not really.

So it was hard to tell, walking next to this brick-shithouse-built man with Steve’s face—kind of—and Steve’s voice and Steve’s heart shining from his eyes. Was it real and Bucky’s soul was just taking a break from his body like it had so many times on the battlefield, or had he finally gone completely irreversibly mad?

Everything was so far away.

Later, much later, when they finally made it to camp and the man with Steve’s heart in his eyes was off to the Colonel’s tent for a scolding—and it must be Steve, of course, Steve would be in trouble with the colonel, who else could it be—Bucky grabbed Dugan by the arm, shaking him.

“Sergeant?” Dugan said, wide smile jolting his mustache. It fell when he saw Bucky’s face. “You okay?”

“Dugan,” Bucky’s tone was low but insistent, “I need you to do a reality check for me.”

“Sarge?” Dugan grabbed him back, took his upper arm in a solid grip. “You should see a medic. Who knows what those fuckers shot up into your blood.”

“No,” Bucky shook his head. No, this wasn’t because of the drugs. “Just...where are we?”

“What?” Dugan’s eyebrows knitted together beneath his hat. “Barnes…”

“Where are we, Dugan?” Bucky loosened his grip but firmed his voice. Higher rank, higher authority.

“At camp, Sergeant,” Dugan answered just as worried as before, but more willing to cooperate. “We’re at camp, we’re safe, we escaped Hydra.”

Bucky exhaled. “Thank you, that’s all I needed.”

He couldn’t be quite sure if his brain didn’t make this whole scene up too, but it was the best he could get. With a nod, he left Dugan there, his brows still furrowed, but his mouth held smartly shut.

Bucky found Steve in a tent after a flustered Private pointed him into the direction of “that giant asshole who just saved a whole regiment, what do you mean you don’t know who Steve Rogers is?”

“Oh, Sir, sorry Sir, you mean Captain America, Sir. That’s his tent right there,” he pointed at it, then whispered conspiratorially, “Think he’s getting a second dressing down.”

Bucky stalked over to the tent. When he reached for the flap, a beautiful woman with an authoritative gaze and luscious red lips stepped out.

Agent Carter.

Dressing down, huh? The only kind of dressing this woman wanted to do to Steve was _un_ dressing. Bucky hadn’t missed the way she looked at him. When it came to Steve Bucky didn’t miss much. He barely spared her a look before he entered.

“Bucky!” Steve was in the process of taking off the torn brown leather jacket. “Was aboutta go lookin’ for you but I have to take this thing off. It...uhh...looks kinda ridiculous” he waved at his torso now only covered with the—and what the _fuck_ kind of circus joke onsie was that—tight blue fabric with a white star on his chest.

“Steve,” Bucky stopped him, lifting his hands. “What the _fuck_ is this?”

Bucky pointed directly at the overblown star on Steve’s chest. Steve opened his mouth, but Bucky wasn’t done yet.

“Captain America?” his voice was low but getting steadily more shrill. He felt unhinged. “Pray tell me why a guy just called you Captain America.”

“Oh, that, I—” Steve rubbed his neck. “I didn’t know what to say, so I told them that’s who I was.”

“How about Steve Rogers, huh? You get punched one too many times while I was gone and forgot your name?” Bucky’s head was spinning.

“That don’t sound quite as catchy,” Steve tried, a joking smile on his lips. Bucky had never in his life felt less like laughing.

“And Captain _America_ does?” Bucky should really watch what his voice was doing because he sounded half-crazed. “You heard of any Captain Europe’s? Captain Soviet? Captain fucking Mexico?”

Steve flinched.

Bucky was beyond mercy. “Yeah, sounds stupid when you say it, doesn’t it?”

Steve shifted, bristling. “Listen, I didn’t give this name to myself, that’s what they called m—”

“Matter’a fact, since we’re already on the topic of your new name,” Bucky stepped closer teeth clenched, “what the hell is _this_.”

He jabbed his finger right in the star on Steve’s chest. It was hard. Not the star. The chest. And not bone-hard like it used to be when Steve was ninety pounds wet on a lucky day after a hefty meal.

“My uniform?” Steve asked, confused now.

“You call this a _uniform_?” Bucky snapped at him, not even waiting for an answer because he didn’t give a damn about the uniform. He waved at Steve’s body, at his height. “I meant this Steve. What the fuck is up with this steroid-shot meat sack that’s your body.”

“Oh, this. Umm, listen, I wanted to explain in my letters, but they didn’t let me. Soon after you left, I managed to enlist.” Bucky opened his mouth in disbelief, but this time Steve shut him up with a raised hand. “At camp, they gave me a serum. It made me big, stronger, too. Very strong, actually. Cured all my ailments. No asthma, I can breathe now, no pneumonia anymore. I hardly bruise when someone hits me.” Steve sounded...excited. When Bucky’s face didn’t get any happier, he added, “It was an experiment.”

As if that helped his case.

“An experiment,” Bucky repeated, the word a dead weight on his tongue.

Steve sighed, annoyed now. “Listen, Bu—”

“Chances of you surviving said experiment?” Bucky narrowed his eyes stepping into Steve’s space.

“Uhh.” Steve stepped back. Bucky followed. Steve kept his eyes trained on the flap of the tent. “Probably fifty-fifty?”

“Probably,” Bucky enunciated slowly. Steve’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t say anything.

“Oh my god,” Bucky exhaled. “You didn’t ask.” He closed his eyes briefly then laughed, crazily, bitterly, convinced that he was right. Finally, he accepted that this was reality. Only Steve had a death wish this strong. “You didn’t even fucking _ask_.”

_You never knew what it’s like_  
_to love someone who tries so hard to die._

They were in the showers. Five guys, showering with lukewarm water, soaping up with something that smelled of perfunctory cleanness without a touch of comfort added to it. Bucky would have preferred pure undiluted bleach.

He glanced at two showers from him. That’s where Steve stood, head under the piss-poor spray of water, rivulets of it running down his shoulders, down the bulging muscles of his back. Bucky hadn’t gotten to look at him like this in Brooklyn. Not since when they were kids. And there he stood now, in all his naked glory, his body a sculpture of power and perfection. Bucky _hated_ it.

When the other three guys slowly filled out and Steve stepped out of the shower and started drying himself off, Bucky followed suit. There was no way of stopping his eyes from gliding over Steve’s efficient hands, his arms flexing, the veins under his skin rippling. Steve caught his eye and froze, getting the wrong idea. Bucky was sure he thought Bucky didn’t even have the decency to stop himself from horny ogling.

That was mostly why he said what he said next. That and the fact it had been boiling under the surface for two weeks now.

“I can’t believe they did that to you.” Bucky felt his face contort with distaste.

“Did what?” Steve asked genuinely perplexed and Bucky almost rolled his eyes.

“I can’t believe they made you look like this,” Bucky explained. “This perfect fucking body, unmarred, clear perfect fucking skin, chiseled like a sculpture.”

Steve looked wary all of a sudden, not knowing where this was going. Carefully, he said, “Yeah, it’s pretty neat.”

“It’s terrible.” Bucky couldn’t hold it back, he couldn’t hold a lot of things back these days. Like two days ago when a sudden bout of anger made him shout at a fresh-faced soldier so hard and so unannounced that the guy almost pissed himself.

“Terrible?” Steve’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline.

“I mean fine, I can deal with the body, though I don’t know why it has to look like _this_ ,” Bucky turned, fully facing Steve and unabashedly ran his eyes top to bottom, bottom to top. “What I can’t deal with is what they did to your face. I would rip the fingers off the man who did that, one by one.”

“What’s wrong with my face?” Steve was getting annoyed, and, fucking hell, why did everything between them have to be so hard. Harder now than ever. They kept butting their heads, tension high, never reaching a crescendo, only mounting, mounting, mounting.

“Nothing’s wrong with it is what’s wrong with it,” Bucky snapped and the tension rose higher, and with it annoyance and anger, a steady companion over the last few months. No one took his anger as well as Steve. “Where’s the weak chin, Steve? Where’s the non-existent jaw? Where are the ears sticking out of your head? Where is the ugly, too big-for-the-head nose?”

“Wow,” Steve’s voice was scathing, “don’t hold yourself back on my account.”

“Where is it, Steve?” Bucky was relentless. He stepped closer, but stopped a few decent paces away, even though he wanted nothing more than to step close and reach up—and he’d have to reach so much higher now—and take Steve’s jaw in his hand to drive the point home. “What’s with this chiseled fucking chin, what’s with the sharp cheekbones, _why did you let them do that_?”

“What’s your fucking problem?” Steve’s shoulders spread as if his body expanded the angrier he got. “I look good, I know I look fucking good, Bucky. That your problem? That for once I’m not trailing behind you picking up the crumbs you left me?”

The crumbs. The girls Bucky had insisted on setting Steve up with until Steve told him...told him.

“You think I’m jealous?” Bucky’s shoulders shook from silent disbelieving laughter.

Steve’s face darkened, and he stepped closer then. If he closed the space, he would tower over Bucky. Not so much in height, but in bulk.

“Maybe not,” Steve’s voice was level, so completely devoid of inflection that Bucky knew he was furious. “Maybe your problem is that I ain’t small anymore. Maybe I was right back then, after all. Maybe you liked me looking small and frail. Bit too much of a man for you now, after all, huh?”

This time Bucky laughed out loud. “Yeah, you’d like to believe that woudn’tcha.”

Bucky leaned in, still not nearly as close as he wanted to be, but he had to be careful here, anyone could come in. But still, he leaned in, as if about to tell a secret.

“Listen to me carefully now,” Bucky whispered, not taking his eyes off Steve’s. “I would fuck you into the mattress so hard you’d be able to smell the mold the army cots are made of for _days_. All three-hundred pounds of you, Steve. I would rail you so goddamn hard, you’d feel it the next day despite the serum.”

Bucky’s heart was hammering in his chest. He’d never said it out loud. He’d never said anything like it to anyone ever. A guy didn’t talk to girls like that, and Bucky had never told Steve that this was what he thought of when he tugged on his dick at night. Steve knew, probably. Hypothetically. But saying it out loud, having it laid out between them so starkly, was a new kind of dread, a new kind of reckless excitement.

Steve swallowed and licked his lips. A flush was climbing his neck and his cheeks. Bucky _felt_ the furious heartbeat underneath Steve’s skin in the tense air between them.

Bucky let silence stretch between them until he finally broke it. “That’s right, Steve, wanted to do it since Brooklyn, wanna do it now too.” Bucky took a sharp breath through his nose, keeping his eyes focused on Steve’s wide ones. “So no, that ain’t my problem. My problem, Steve, is that they didn’t need to. They didn’t need to change you like that.”

Steve opened his mouth but closed it, probably unable to come up with a response.

“When did a soldier have to be handsome, Steve? When did a soldier have to look like a fucking Adonis? When did it become necessary for a professional goddamn murdered to hafta look good?” Bucky finally let his gaze fall away. “They made you into a poster boy. They gave you the body of a god, but the power of a peasant. And you still don’t see that. They didn’t make you for war, they didn’t make you to help win the fight. They made you for those USO tours, they made you to _show you_ , a fucking parade horse, Steve. Pretty, beautiful, strong, smells of stale freedom, like a tiger in a cage. And worst of all? They didn’t keep you there.”

“Ah, of course.” Steve rolled his eyes. “We’re back to square one. Poor Stevie Rogers, ain’t cut out for it. Well, now I am. So according to you, I should have—what? Let them parade me? What do you fucking want from me, Bucky?”

“I wanted you to stay home!” The sentence turned into a shout by the end. Quite unbidden, tremors started to run up and down Bucky’s arms. “I left you _home_. Safe. And here you fucking are excited to get blood on your hands, eager to kill, eager to die.”

“I ain’t gonna die, Buck.”

So sure, Steve sounded so sure. The fucking idiot. He’d seen all of one battle since he came and even that one he cooked up himself.

“You die, Steve,” Bucky had to clench his hands to stop the shaking. “One way or another you die.”

_I would know,_  
_I died long before I fell._

They sat down at one of the large army tables, the Howling Commandos along with a few lucky soldiers filling up places that were left. They all fought to be close to the army’s most successful team, hear about another one of Commandos’ great adventures. As always, it was Morita who told the story, true, every single word of it, but spun so craftily they could have very well fought dragons. The day’s victory even made the beans taste better that day.

Steve was still eating when almost everyone else was finished. The missions were hard on his enhanced body since the food was scarce. The guys let him eat, but didn’t leave the table. They pulled out a packet of cards and busied themselves playing rummy. When it turned out no one really knew what rules they were playing with, the discussion got heated. Dernier insisted that the French rules were the right ones, Dugan had some weird rules no one outside Massachusetts ever heard of, and Falsworth didn’t fucking know how to play at all.

It was during that raucous debate that Jones gave Bucky a long slow look that had become all too familiar. He followed it up with a suggestive tilt of the head and Bucky’s whole body preened with excitement. He knew this game and he reveled in it.

They both stood up, Jones first, and, when he was a few paces away from the table, Bucky after him. Unnoticed by everyone but Steve, they slipped away and strolled towards the woods easy as a summer’s breeze.

Bucky couldn’t help it, he glanced back and met Steve’s steely eyes. His heart was pounding. Partly because he was finally gonna come somewhere else than on his hand, but mostly out of a perverse feeling of righteous vengeance that flooded him when he saw Steve’s face freeze with anger.

Later that evening, not long after dinner, he would fold himself neatly into the seat next to Steve, relaxed and sated. “Nice fella, Jones, ain’t he?” he would say and Steve would break the pencil he was holding and Bucky would laugh until there were tears in his eyes because _fuck this shitty life_ that’s why.

_Oh, Steve, you must have known._  
_My dick in Jones’s mouth and your furious face imprinted on the back of my eyelids  
_ _made coming down his throat that much sweeter._

The log under Bucky’s ass was the most comfortable resting place he’d sat on in the last two weeks. This log was the one good thing in a string of shitty, boring days trudging through the thick forests of south-eastern France. It was so good that Bucky couldn’t resist taking a cigarette from his dwindling supply to make the moment even better.

He lit it and focused his eyes back on Steve, who was trying to start up a fire. Bucky didn’t even think to offer to help. He deserved to sit on his ass while others worked; Gabe and Jones scouting the perimeter to the northeast, Falsworth and Dernier to the southeast, and Morita in search of more kindling. Bucky had done all the scouting for the past five days. Walked up every goddamn hill first, set up his scope and ruffled through the thick leaves with his gaze, trying to find an enemy while others ate and rested.

Bucky inhaled the smoke, let it squeeze into the corners of his lungs and breathed it out again. Life’s small mercies.

“The night before I left,” Bucky spoke up, unprompted. He felt relaxed after being coiled with tension for days. He felt like he could handle a conversation like this. Steve, on the contrary, didn’t seem to: he froze, crouched by a pile of twigs. Nevertheless, Bucky went on, asking what he wanted to ask. “Why’d you do that?”

_Why did you kiss me? Touch me, hold me? Why then and not now?_

“I…” Steve placed another twig on the pile. “I don’t—I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Bucky rolled his eyes sad that Steve couldn’t see it. “Don’t _lie_ ,” he drawled.

“I wanted…” A twig snapped beneath Steve’s boots as his shoulders slouched in defeat. He wasn’t looking at Bucky, but Bucky didn’t mind. “I wanted you to have something nice to remember. Wanted the last time you saw me to be something...good.”

Bucky nodded, accepting it. For once, he didn’t have the need to dig further. He smiled wistfully and looked up to admire how the last vestiges of sunlight colored the leaves golden. “It was. I thought about it every single day in this hellhole.”

The tightness in Steve’s body unwound. “I’m glad.” Bucky could hear the smile in his voice. He left it at that, but for once it was Steve who cracked open a bit more of his heart. “I did too. Every day.”

Bucky closed his eyes. “I’m glad,” he echoed, soft and sincere.

_It was in sweet moments like this that I remembered it was worth it._  
_Loving you was worth it all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked this chapter! Tell me what you think about Bucky in war, I really love writing him, I find him such a deliciously complex character. 
> 
> I'll post the last chapter (I promise 4th is going to truly be the last) asap! Probably Thursday. 
> 
> If you like the fic, you can reblog [**this post**](https://synonym-for-life.tumblr.com/post/615400111444475904/stucky-fic-troubled-water-running-cold) on Tumblr.


	4. In Joy and In Sorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well! Finally, the last chapter! Sorry for the lateness (and the length, it's quite a bit longer than the other ones) - these two assholes just had so many issues to get over before they started having sex. And I really wanted to write that sex scene. But then they also wouldn't stop banging for hundreds of words.... 
> 
> And they did have K-Y jelly during WWII, so that's not a mistake. I did my sexy research. Also, note that these two don't use a condom, though, because [**as this wonderful article**](http://www.mackenziekincaid.com/writing/research/condoms-in-wwii/) puts it:  
>  _“And the idea of gay soldiers was of course not approached at all, because they supposedly didn’t exist; VD training films very explicitly stated that the only way for a soldier to catch VD was from a woman, which could have led to gay men in the Army thinking they couldn’t catch anything from other men. (I like to hope they knew better, but my faith in people’s sex education knowledge is pretty much always at an all-time low.)_

_Possibly the most ironic thing was that you thought_  
_the war wouldn’t get to you like it got to me._

_But a part of you died, too._  
_I would know. I knew all your parts._

“He was a kid,” Steve told his hands, head bowed and eyes glazed over.

“I know,” Bucky pressed his shoulder into Steve’s offering silent support. The Commandos all sat in various places around the bare, kitchen, its walls blackened by fire. They had yet to speak up as they sat and watched their Captain go through a breakdown, long overdue.

“And I don’t mean a sixteen-year-old kid. We’ve seen those in their army, among the Partisans. I mean a _kid_. A fucking ten-year-old. Who gave a _ten-year-old_ a gun?”

Morita shifted, speaking up. “He probably lost his family, decided he was big enough to take matters into his own hands. Confused, scared, probably didn’t even know who the enemy was. It happens, Cap. It’s war.”

“I didn’t even mean to…” Steve trailed off.

It had happened behind Bucky’s back so he hadn’t seen it. He knew exactly what had happened, though. Sound by sound, move by move.

They had thought they’d cleared the area, they’d thought no one was there, but then, suddenly, there was a kid, a scrappy little thing, aiming a gun at Steve’s chest as Bucky stood just far enough to be unable to reach them. Steve had tried to talk him down, but the kid hadn’t understood a word of English. Then, something outside had tumbled to the ground, a piece of the roof maybe, and the loud noise had made Bucky whip his head.

A few things had happened almost simultaneously. The shield had swished through the air behind him and a shot had rung out right when the vibranium hit a body with a muted thud. The bullet had landed in the wall a foot from Bucky’s head.

“I didn’t even mean to throw it that hard,” Steve rubbed his face with his hands, letting them hide him.

The kid hadn’t made it. Dead on impact.

The worst thing, though, the thing none of them were saying, even though every single one of them knew it was true was that Steve wouldn’t have done it if the kid hadn’t tried to shoot Bucky. Steve would have let himself be shot sooner than harm the child, riding on pure hope that the serum would pull him through.

Bucky though...Bucky was a different story. The Commandos knew _that_ from the day Steve barged into a Hydra fortress alone, liberating hundreds of men, while he was saving one. They never said anything about it, never pressed and never asked. Jones knew, of course, he and Bucky had an understanding. Two queers, one Jewish the other one black, they had an understanding and they kept their mouths shut. As for the others, Bucky didn’t know what they thought and he didn’t much care anyway. They were smart enough to avert their eyes when Steve and Bucky got into a pissing contest, intelligent enough to busy themselves with cleaning their weapons when Bucky and Steve spoke in hushed tones in the corner, Brooklyn and sunshine and Winnie’s apple pie on their mind. And, most important of all, they pretended not to notice how Bucky’s eyes lingered sometimes, how he searched for the freckles on Steve’s nose that weren’t there anymore.

“We all have our regrets, Cap,” Jones piped up quietly from his corner, his gaze gliding over where Bucky and Steve’s shoulders touched, his eyes flicking up to Bucky’s, knowing. Bucky almost felt relieved that someone knew, finding a trace of compassion where he least expected it.

“Yeah,” Steve said and finally took his hands off his face. His eyes were tired, sad. “Yeah, we do. I suppose we have to learn to live with that.”

That night, when they lay in the dark, swaddled in the olive green blankets, Bucky’s mind flashed back to Steve’s words and the quick glance he’d sent his way when he said it.

_There are two things imperative to being a sniper:_  
_The first is being cocky._  
_You gotta be cocksure that when you pull the trigger you’ll blow some brains out._  
_The second is enjoying it._

“How are you so good at this?” Steve whispered, the whole length of his body pressed to Bucky’s side. They were lying on the ground under the roof of an old barn watching a whole battalion of Germans march through the abandoned village. The thundering of their boots made enough noise that they could talk at a normal volume, but the fear made them keep their voices down.

The rest of the Howlies were hiding in the nearby houses, guns cocked, and prayers on their lips. If they were discovered, they were done for. Ten soldiers, or maybe thirty because Steve had to count for at least twenty, couldn’t dream of defeating an entire battalion, no matter how skilled they were. Still, in case it all went to shit, Bucky wasn’t going without a fight. As soon as he and Steve settled into the cramped, dusty space, he pointed his rifle at the opening under the roof beam and set to waiting.

“Good at what?” Bucky whispered back, his right eye pressed tightly to the scope of his rifle, his left one shut. “Sniping?”

He felt, more than saw Steve nod beside him. Steve wasn’t looking at the slow procession of soldiers at all, the idiot. Bucky hesitated to answer. It wasn’t like he hadn’t asked himself that before. He had been wondering about it even more after Azzano. If his aim was accurate ninety-nine percent of the time before… well, after Azzano, he had yet to miss.

“I’m just enough of a bastard, I guess.” Was the answer Bucky offered. A man on the street looked up, and Bucky tensed. There was no way he could see him, but it felt like he had looked directly into Bucky’s eyes. He had tiny freckles spattered over his nose. Like Steve had, only they were gone now, taken away from him because those bastards wanted a puppet, not a man.

Steve bristled beside him. He didn’t like it when Bucky got all morbid like that. “You’re not a bastard, Bucky.”

Bucky wet his lips, considering if he should go on, or stop the conversation before Steve could find out how fucked up he was. He decided on the former.

“When you kill someone in battle, they know it’s a possibility that they’ll die, but they have a chance to fight it, they have a chance to be brave in the face of death.” Bucky was tempted to take his eye off the scope and fix Steve with a stare. Instead, he continued, choosing his words carefully, “When you kill someone from a tree, especially if it’s still quiet, if the fight hasn’t broken out yet... you see the color of their eyes, the wrinkles on their forehead, the relaxed shape of their mouth, and, in the second when you press the trigger and the shot rings out, you see all that change.”

Bucky took in a slow breath, man after young man passing in front of his scope. “In that split second, right before you blow their brains out, you see what a human face looks like when it’s stripped of all hope.” Bucky chanced a quick glance at Steve. He was completely still, frozen in place. Bucky shrugged. “You gotta be a bit of a bastard for that.”

Bucky left out the part where you had to also _like it_. Steve didn’t need to hear that.

They fell into silence until the sound of the boots hitting the gravel retreated. It would still be heard for miles, but with every minute Bucky’s breath grew steadier. They wouldn’t leave their hiding space for another hour. One could never know if there were some stragglers left behind, or if they’d left a few soldiers to poke through the dilapidated houses to look for supplies. Not like they’d find anything but a few rotting animal corpses. Bucky scrunched his nose when he was reminded of the gag-inducing smell coming from the barn below. Good thing it was only a dead cow, not a dead kid.

“You still believe in God, Stevie?” Bucky asked when he removed his eye form the scope and pulled the rifle back. He carefully set it down on his other side and flopped over onto his back, pillowing his head with his arms behind his head. Steve was still lying on his stomach, staring at the street. He frowned.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Bucky hoped his eyes conveyed his disbelief. Fucking incredible, this man. “I mean…” he waved around vaguely indicating the whole situation they were in, all the terrible things they’ve seen, all the terrible things they’ve done. “Isn’t your God supposed to be merciful?”

“You keep saying ‘your God’.” Steve finally turned that frown on Bucky.

“I don’t know how this escaped your notice all these years, but I’m Jewish. As are the _Hamantaschen_ you practically inhaled whenever my mother made them.”

Bucky hadn’t told anyone in the Army that he was Jewish. Most days he didn’t even like to think about it himself. Every time he did, chills of pure terror ran through his bones. He thought about Azzano. How he was the first to be chosen. How he was one of the _lucky ones_. How he didn’t really know if any of his extended family had stayed in Europe when his grandma and grandpa and their sisters and brothers moved to America. How they were surely all dead (or worse) if they were still here.

Steve rolled his eyes. “I know that.” He elbowed him in the ribs for good measure. “But half the time you talk, you keep saying _Jesus Christ_ and _good Lord_.”

“I like taking the name of the Christian Lords in vain.” Bucky smirked, then winced when Steve’s elbow hit his ribs again. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Rogers. Couldn’t they have made your elbows less pointy when they blew you up like a Michelin Tyre Man?”

“Don’t you dare,” Bucky hissed when Steve made another move with his pointy elbow. Bucky kicked him in warning but it had little effect on Steve who started laughing into his forearm. Bucky let himself laugh too, pressing the length of his body more firmly against Steve, not even caring for his lack of subtlety. This was one of the good moments. As much as Bucky wallowed in the bad ones, there were many more good moments, sunny moments, the ones he kept piled around his heart like a precious treasure. They all sounded like Steve’s laughter.

Bucky didn’t know why he insisted on making his life miserable by wanting something he couldn’t have. Perhaps it was a natural disposition of his to be tragic.

“So...Agent Carter,” Bucky asked, half because self-flagellation was in his bones and half because Steve had been awfully quiet about it and Bucky genuinely wanted to know. Steve was his best friend, after all.

“Peggy.” Steve nodded. Bucky knew they were on first name terms, but it still struck him as funny that Steve, out of all people, would be the only one to have that honor. Steve who acted like a knight to every girl he ever met in Brooklyn and barely knew how to talk to them on top of it.

“What a catch.” Bucky smiled when he said it because she _was_. As jealous as he was of Carter, she was the best kind of woman and Steve only deserved the best.

“Yeah, she’s—” Steve searched for his words.

“A gonner for you?” Bucky supplied, winking. It was true. Margaret Carter, agent extraordinaire and one of the most beautiful dames god had ever graced the earth with was a gonner for Steve Rogers. _Steve Rogers._ Not Captain America.

“The obvious choice,” Steve found the end of his sentence a millisecond after Bucky. He said it like a man who wasn’t too happy about his choices.

“The obvious choice?” Bucky propped himself on one elbow, looking down on Steve’s drawn face.

“Yeah, you know…” Steve lay back down, his head pillowed by a pile of old hay. “Pretty, smart, easy to talk to, brave, likes me even.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Bucky said dryly seeing Steve’s expressionless face. Steve heaved a sigh, not meeting Bucky’s eyes.

“What happens when I can’t get it up?” He mumbled, his eyes burning a hole in the beam above him.

“What?” Bucky blinked.

“You heard me,” Steve told him, red in the face, but resolutely trying not to show it with any other part of his body.

“Really?” Bucky couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “With _her?_ Have you _seen_ her, at all? Have you ever _looked at her?_ ”

Bucky couldn’t imagine a single man in the world who wouldn’t want to kiss Agent Carter, and ‘kiss’ was putting it mildly. True, Carter was one of the few women in the army, which was basically full of young, homesick, horny men who would take any chance at distraction they could get, but Bucky didn’t doubt that when Carter walked down the war-free streets of London men all but fell at her feet.

“Yeah, she’s beautiful,” Steve acknowledged.

“And?” Bucky couldn’t believe what Steve was saying. Sure Steve had told him he ‘wasn’t like Bucky’, that he didn’t like dames, but Bucky was convinced that only extended to certain dames. That Steve maybe just wasn’t as easily pleased as Bucky was. He was sure that someone like Peggy Carter would pass the cut.

“Nothing.” Finally, Steve glanced at Bucky’s stricken face. He looked...embarrassed, but relieved. Like it had been weighing on him for a while now and it felt good to finally say it out loud.

“Nothing,” Bucky repeated. Steve shrugged in response.

“Wow,” Bucky breathed, flopping down on his back too. Now, this was a revelation.

“Wow, indeed.” Steve laughed, self-deprecating.

_You were inching closer while an invisible hand was pulling me away._

_Then came the blissful day. The third time I was allowed to love you._  
_Third and last._

“You wanted to see me,” Bucky said as soon as he entered Steve’s tent. The bastard had the biggest tent out of all the Commandos and he was the only one who had a tent all for himself. _What a wanker,_ Falsworth had said when he found out, sparking a vigorous conversation about how Steve was _literally_ the biggest wanker since he was the only one who could jerk off in peace.

“Yeah, sorry,” Steve looked up from the small table where numerous maps and notes were spread. The wind outside was howling. It wasn’t particularly cold, but the canvas of the tents was flapping accompanied by the creak of branches above their heads. Steve’s eyes were distant and there was a worried crease between his eyebrows. “I know it’s late, but I wanted to see you.”

“You think something’s off.” Bucky could tell from how Steve’s shoulders seemed to carry more weight than before any other mission. Bucky didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to bury his head in the sand and never hear that name again. Zola. He would see Zola. The dread that had been pooling in his stomach during the week of planning, made itself known again.

“Yeah,” Steve shook his head, “I don’t know.”

“Feels like we’re missing something,” Bucky supplied because he, too, had felt it, the closer to the day they got. Something wasn’t right and they had no idea what.

“I’ve gone through this a thousand times and the plan looks faultless. Crazy, but bulletproof.” Steve rubbed his hand over his face. He shrugged his massive shoulders as if trying to get rid of the tension. He stood up. “Anyway, that’s not why I asked you to come. I wanted to ask how you’re doing. I know Zola...”

“I’m fine,” Bucky said, too quickly for it to be true. The pool of dread sloshed around in his guts.

“Bucky, if you need us to—”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Bucky told him in a tone that brooked no argument. To prove it he walked up to the table, to look at the maps. There was even a grainy photo of Zola among the notes. He took it in his hand, _fine, he was fine,_ and looked at the all-too-familiar smug little face. He felt sick. He threw it back onto the pile with a flick of his wrist.

Suddenly, Steve’s hand was on Bucky’s neck, warm and secure. Bucky almost flinched from surprise. It was unusual. Steve touching him like this. He rarely ever showed physical affection, and he sure as hell never showed it first.

Bucky looked up, meeting Steve’s blue eyes. Steve looked...worried. The mission was obviously weighing more heavily on him than he let on. He was terrified. Terrified and desperate, he was clutching onto Bucky like it was saving _him._

The longer they stood like that, the more the tension mounted, the mysterious knife-cutting tension that sneaked in whenever they got too close, or let their defenses down for just a bit too long. Bucky’s eyes flicked to Steve’s lips involuntarily. They were so pink. So pink and so pretty and so kissable.

Steve’s hand fell away from Bucky’s neck, but he didn’t move away.

“You know…” Steve licked his lips, before casting his eyes at the desk, the picture of a desolate soldier, standing over strategy notes in his army green trousers and a shirt that barely fit. He was so close, his body burning against Bucky’s side. “I thought...with the serum… I thought it would go away.”

Bucky’s heart kicked into gear as if it had forgotten to do its job for a few seconds. He didn’t need to ask what Steve meant with it. He knew exactly what he meant. He had wondered it himself. Had agonized over it, really. Until he caught Steve’s eyes sliding over his body in the showers, saw them dip down below his waist, subtle as a brick.

“It didn’t.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Steve confirmed. His adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. The tendons and the vein in his neck visible. There was so much power in his body now, coiled into every muscle and bone. Bucky wanted to close the distance, press his mouth against Steve’s pulse, feel its frantic beat with his tongue.

“And?” Was this the real reason Steve had asked him to come or was it a whim? The kind of crazy mindless sort of inspiration of a dying man that they saw all too often in war. And weren’t they all, weren’t they all dying men.

“I don’t…” Steve shook his head and met Bucky’s eyes again. His face was open, sincere. The look opened Bucky’s soul like a ragged knife. Steve’s voice was so low when he continued that Bucky had to focus on his lips to catch everything. “Maybe it’s not...something you heal. Maybe it’s not—maybe it means we’re not...sick.”

Something twisted in Bucky’s chest, something very close to his heart. The truth was Bucky had never really let himself think that it might be okay. He decided he didn’t care enough even if it wasn’t. But if it wasn’t even wrong. If they weren’t _sick_ … He felt a prickle behind his eyes. “Maybe,” he whispered into the air between them, “maybe...”

“I want it,” Steve’s voice sounded determined, the way he did when he decided something on an impulse, doubt showing on his face but not in his voice, never in his voice. “What you said in the showers, I want that.”

He pinned his eyes on Bucky’s and Bucky’s breath stopped short in his lungs at the admission.

“What I said in the—” Bucky’s thoughts splintered as his pulse picked up.

“I want it.” Steve swallowed, nervous, but resolute.

“Do — you want me to…” Bucky’s body felt like it had been asleep for hundreds of years and it had just been awoken.

Steve licked his lips and his eyes flicked to the cot in the corner. Bucky’s followed. Steve was serious. He was actually dead serious.

“Jesus,” Bucky said and closed his eyes briefly, swaying in place. “ _Now?_ ”

The jut of Steve’s jaw was determined when he nodded, but the color high on his cheeks betrayed how much his body was reacting.

“ _Jesus,_ ” Bucky repeated when he saw desire written in every line of Steve’s body, unrestrained for the first time. Bucky lifted his hand slowly, sure that Steve would change his mind any second. He ran his knuckles over the blush on Steve’s cheeks, cupping his face. “Can I—”

“Yes,” Steve told him, awkward but wanting, wanting, wanting.

Bucky leaned in, crushing their mouths together. He had no patience to be gentle and Steve didn’t seem like he wanted him to be from the way his breath left his mouth on a gasp. He slid his hand to the back of Steve’s neck and pulled him in, pressing his mouth against Steve’s, hard, not even moving it, just reveling at the press of their lips. Then his hand tilted Steve’s head gently to the side and he kissed him for real. This spurted Steve into action, and he moved against Bucky’s body, hands touching, pulling, as he opened his mouth and let Bucky’s tongue in. It wasn’t a skilled kind of kiss, but there was no time for skill, too much pent up desire between them, spilling out into their kisses, their touches, their gasps.

Bucky felt like he was floating, like he was outside of his body yet again, but for once it was a welcome thing. His body was burning, burning everywhere Steve touched him, and soon his touches weren’t obstructed by fabric, soon Steve’s hands were under Bucky’s shirt, on his bare skin, and his were on Steve’s, grabbing his hips pushing him back towards the table, which whined when the weight of Steve’s body slammed into it.

“Steve—” Bucky felt like he should stop it, felt like Steve couldn’t really want it. Steve only pulled him back in, his kisses almost feverish with desperation caused by something— _something_ —looming over them, whether faith or future, Bucky didn’t know.

Bucky also didn’t know when they divested themselves of their shirts, but all of a sudden, they were bare chest to bare chest, Steve’s silky soft skin sliding against his and Bucky had to pull back, had to take a breath because it was all too much. He looked at Steve, running his eyes down to where one of his hands rested on Steve’s waist, the muscle more pliant to the touch than it looked. He drank him in, the unfamiliar body, that was somehow still _Steve._ _His_ Steve. Bucky met Steve’s eyes under his lashes, taking in his flushed face. Steve wasn’t accustomed to being so openly admired, and what a pity that was.

“You blush like this for everyone, Stevie?” Bucky whispered, tracing his fingertips across Steve’s cheeks, down his neck and chest, that was colored red, too.

Steve opened his mouth to answer, but his reply was cut of by a gasp as Bucky lowered his mouth to his neck. Bucky kissed down its path, letting his lips slide over Steve’s collarbone, down to the hard pink nipple, which he took into his mouth. Steve moaned, and Bucky’s hands joined the fun his mouth was having, cupping Steve’s pecs, as he worshipped them with his tongue.

Bucky let his hand slip lower, inch by inch getting closer to the waistline of Steve’s trousers, and then lower still until his knuckles mapped the outline of Steve’s bulge.

Steve froze.

Bucky turned his hand around and palmed him for real, cupping his dick. Steve still didn’t respond. He looked up and saw uncertainty flickering over Steve’s features. There was shame in his eyes. Guilt in the twist of his mouth. Bucky let his hand fall away.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, disgusted with the thought that he might have been pushing Steve, that Steve didn’t even want it. “Sorry, I shouldn’t—we should stop.”

“No,” Steve cut him off. “No, I want it, it’s just… I want it.”

Steve took Bucky’s wrist, closed his eyes, and pressed Bucky’s hand, palm flat against the front of his trousers. When his eyes slipped open again, Bucky took Steve’s jaw in his hand, focusing his eyes on Steve’s, and saw the internal battle going on inside him.

“Fuck it,” Bucky said, voice low, desperation coloring it. He felt like time was running away from them, running _out_ for them, and Steve must have felt it too because his grip on Bucky’s wrist was almost bruising, his eyes burning with intensity. “ _Fuck it,_ Steve.”

Fuck them. Fuck everyone who thinks this is wrong. Fuck the army, fuck the laws, fuck everyone who would hate us for this. Fuck them and take what you want.

Steve licked his lips and stared at Bucky, just stared at him, right into Bucky’s fucking soul, and then he pulled him in, kissing him hard, sliding his tongue into Bucky’s mouth and, _Jeez, Steve was a fast learner._ He pressed Bucky’s hand to his dick harder and ground against it.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky mumbled against Steve’s lips because this was Steve Rogers taking what he wanted and Bucky was ready to give it all. They kissed, tongues twining, while Steve thrust into Bucky’s hand. Bucky stepped even closer, pressing his length along Steve’s body to get some friction for his dick too.

Steve broke away. “Let’s...” He licked his lips, tilting his head towards the cot in the corner. It was bigger than Bucky’s. Perks of being a captain.

“We’re gonna—” Bucky’s mind took some time to catch up with him. If they were really gonna go through with this, if Steve really wanted it...“We’re gonna need some slick.”

Christ, now _he_ was blushing, the mere thought of what he was implying out loud sending blood rushing to his head.

Steve extracted himself from Bucky’s arms and walked to the bed. “I have some K-Y.”

He fumbled with a bag on the floor until he pulled out a small bottle of K-Y jelly. Now that they had pulled apart awkwardness hung in the air. Bucky wanted to say something that would dispel it, but he couldn’t find a single word in his head.

“Uh, do you—” Steve gave an awkward half-shrug, shaking the bottle of lubricant in his hand slightly. “Do you wanna prepare me or should I?”

Just like that Bucky’s head was flooded with words. None of them were coherent, but they were words, like o _h my—Jesus—Steve—he—fingers—fuck._ Bucky’s hands were clammy as he walked closer.

“Get—get on the bed,” he practically stammered. Steve obeyed, as Bucky stepped closer grabbing the jelly from Steve’s hand. Before Steve could position himself, Bucky pulled him in, hand twisting in Steve’s hair as he kissed him hot and dirty. When they parted Steve was panting hard. With shy smile, Steve cast his eyes to the bed and turned away. Bucky honest to god had to grab his dick through his trousers because of how much it twitched, when Steve, without warning, pulled his trousers along with his underwear down to his knees, before dropping down on all fours, burying his face in his hands, his bare ass out in the open.

Bucky would have told him to get the clothes off completely, but there was something about Steve positioned like that that made Bucky absolutely stir crazy. He got rid of his own pants and boots as quickly as he could, thankful that he’d never laced the boots up all the way. He was on the bed behind Steve in seconds, running his hands up and down Steve’s torso, marveling at how he shuddered at the touch. He pressed his chest against Steve’s back and rubbed his cock against his ass, letting him know just how hard he was.

He opened the bottle of K-Y and slicked his fingers, making enough room between their bodies, to slide his fingers along Steve’s crack. Bucky spread a generous amount of lubricant around Steve’s pucker, massaging it, until, emboldened by Steve’s gasps, he pushed one finger in. Steve’s sharp intake of breath reminded Bucky that he didn’t have the faintest idea what he was doing.

“Shit, Steve, I don’t know…” Bucky panicked, what if he was doing it all wrong. “I’ve only ever done this once.”

“Just keep going,” Steve’s voice was scratchy. He pushed himself back onto Bucky’s finger until it was inside of him all the way. Bucky had to take a few deep breaths and squeeze the base of his cock again because he wanted to avoid some premature embarrassment. When he gathered his wits, he moved his finger, dragging it out of Steve’s pink hole, and pushing it back in slowly. “You can give me another,” Steve told him and Bucky did. Not a minute passed by when Steve said, “Another.”

Bucky obeyed and _holy shit_ it fucking _fit._ He had three fingers in Steve’s body, Steve’s body _which was moving_ , pushing back against Bucky’s fingers, taking them deeper on every push, stretching the tight ring of muscles further.

“You’ve done this before,” Bucky breathed as the realization hit, shocked and elated at once.

“I—uhh.” Bucky could swear Steve’s whole neck flushed as he tried to get the words out. “Only by myself. My own fingers.”

And what an image that was. Steve in Brooklyn, hair plastered to his head, while he worked his artist fingers inside of himself. Steve now, in the army, pushing his hips down to meet the fingers buried in him and lifting them back up to fuck into the loose fist of his hand.

“Come on, come on, I’m ready,” Steve urged, his voice muffled by the pillow as he fucked himself back harder and moaned. It wasn’t until Bucky pulled his fingers out, his eyes, taking in the slick pink pucker, that he realized his own cock was painfully hard.

“Fucking hell, Stevie,” Bucky breathed as he lubricated himself, unable to take his eyes off Steve’s hole. A whole litany of prayers went through his head as, unable to wait for even a second more, he pressed forward, aligned himself and pushed, watching the head of his dick disappear into the heat of Steve’s body. “Fuck,” he groaned. Bliss, this was bliss.

He ran his hands up Steve’s back, gently, so fucking gently, because this was Steve, Steve sweating under him, Steve moaning under him, Steve pushing his hips back to meet him. Bucky did him slowly, awe-struck on every thrust, Steve’s rim dragging over his cock.

“Like you said you would, Bucky,” Steve begged—he fucking _begged_ , “come on, do it like you said you would.”

Bucky would have huffed out a laugh if his lungs had enough breath for it. Steve Rogers could tell him to jump off a building and he would do it. So Bucky did what he was told, did what he promised he would. He picked up the pace, his hips quickening as he grabbed Steve’s more firmly, and started fucking him for real. He draped himself over Steve’s sweaty back, wrapping his arms around him, and _fucking railed all three hundred pounds of him._ Just like he promised.

He watched Steve’s face, one side hidden in the pillow, but the other on full display. He watched how Steve’s mouth fell open on a particularly hard thrust, watched his eyes flutter closed as his eyebrows drew together. A drop of sweat rolled down his brow and Bucky licked it before pressing his nose to Steve’s temple and thrusting his hips impossibly harder.

“Steve,” Bucky’s lips dragged across Steve’s hot skin, “Steve, I can’t, I’m gonna—sorry—I’m gonna.”

Bucky’s body seized, every muscle going tense as his eyes rolled into his head before a violent shiver ran down his spine. After a moment of complete stillness, he emptied himself inside of Steve.

He was sure he blacked out for a minute because when he came to, Steve was supporting all his weight, while his hand worked on his cock, stiff and leaking between his legs. Bucky felt himself softening, but he pressed closer, grinding his hips in minute circles, letting Steve feel him.

“Stevie.” Bucky pressed a kiss to Steve’s neck, where the wet blond hair met his pale but flushed skin. “So pretty, Jesus, look at you.”

Bucky brought his hand to Steve’s cheek and ran his fingers down the heated skin. Steve’s body was shaking beneath his, his hand working furiously. Bucky traced his fat bottom lip with his thumb, feeling the uneven rapid breaths, right up until they stopped, Steve’s lungs momentarily taking hostage of air before expelling it out on a loud moan as he spilled into his hand.

Steve crumbled under the weight of his orgasm and Bucky followed, resting on Steve’s back while they caught their breath. When they recovered, Bucky pulled out, the action producing an obscene squelching sound. Steve flushed in embarrassment, avoiding his eyes.

“Hey,” Bucky whispered, running a calming hand down Steve’s shoulder. “Fuck it, remember.”

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, “yeah.” A small smile curled his lips. He didn’t quite believe it, Bucky could tell, but the post-orgasmic bliss was enough to keep those thoughts away.

They fell asleep tangled together on a narrow bed, their What If world colliding with the real one for one peaceful night.

_The next day, I died._  
_In joy and in sorrow, they say._

_Guess it’s why we didn’t work,_  
_You only loved me in tragedy._

Bucky’s wild eyes found Steve’s. Blue blue blue. Blue like the sky above Bucky’s outstretched hand. He was reaching, grasping, _please please please, this can’t be the end._

He knew he was falling before he fell. He knew because he saw realization hit Steve’s eyes. Saw the helpless terror in them.

For a split second, along with fear so cold his lungs froze, crazy uncontrollable glee spread through him.

Right when the iron rod gave way under his grip, right when he slipped, he saw something in Steve break beyond repair. He saw a part of Steve die right in front of him and sticky, charred satisfaction pounded through his veins.

_That’s right. You loved me too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big THANK YOU to all of you who left such lovely, thoughtful comments. They mean so much to me and they made me think about their dynamic even more, which hopefully resulted in even better writing. I hope you're all staying healthy and safe. I assume most of you are quarantining with AO3 as your new plush animal :'D
> 
> Oh, and here's another bit of Bucky's angsty internal poetry that I couldn't decide whether to attach to the end of the chapter or not:
> 
> _The image of your eyes dimming is my gravestone.  
>  And on it, it is written.  
> Here lies one, but two died that day.  
> Yes, he loved me too.  
> Yes, it was me who snuffed out the light in Steve Rogers’ eyes._
> 
> If you like the fic, you can reblog [**this post**](https://synonym-for-life.tumblr.com/post/615748670473797632/stucky-fic-troubled-water-running-cold) on Tumblr.
> 
> If you're into image edits, I also made one about Bucky's musings on what it is to be a sniper. You can find it [**here**](https://synonym-for-life.tumblr.com/post/615843094271868928/bucky-took-in-a-slow-breath-man-after-young-man)


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